Floating weir skimmer has been widely used for skimming surface liquid or scum, such as oil skimmer, decanter, oil spill skimmer, etc. Taking the oil skimmer as an example, the disadvantages of the oil skimmer in current applications includes difficulty in skimming-level adjustment, short skimming weir, narrow skimming range, and low efficiency.
The floating weir skimmer in prior art, also has problems such as narrow ranges in collecting surface liquid or scum and difficulty in liquid level control, etc. U.S. Pat. No. 6,251,466 discloses a floating skimmer which only includes a single-side weir plate, and can only collect single-side liquid. Since the floating weir floats with the help of the floater carried by the weir plate, it is difficult for an extremely long floating weir plate to achieve horizontal adjustment, leading to non-uniformly collected surface liquid or scum, high raw liquid content, and other defects. U.S. Pat. No. 5,478,483 discloses a floating weir skimmer. Although the skimmer includes two weir plates, both of the weir plates are installed on a single side, which leads the skimmer can also only collect single-side liquid. U.S. Pat. No. 3,970,556 discloses a floating weir skimmer which is also of a single-side floating weir plate. The floating weir plate of the floating weir skimmer requires external control, failing to achieve self-adjustment. All of the foregoing floating weir skimmers have defects in application, especially restrictions in collecting a large-range liquid surface. Therefore, so far a skimmer with a wide collecting range, good performance, self-adjustment of weir plate, and stable operation is needed in the art.